look! it's a ufo!

so the brothers and i had a good time on our little road trip down to the beach.

yes, we did see a ufo, or at least a very shiny plane, and tim played dj for a little while and then we listened to some big-band-era jazz.

i think i won't be able to live any longer without regina specktor's album in my life. but i've got to wait until i get home on wednesday to buy it, unfortunately.

and now, the beach, thank goodness. life is always so much better on the beach. if i ever moved out of the mountains i would have to come here. none of this flat ground, no water business.

it's just the family and the noise and the fact that it takes us 30 minutes to start a movie. every time all 15 of us get settled onto the couch and floor, someone has to go to the bathroom or turn the fan down or shift positions so they can see the tv or turn the light's off, but then grandpa protests saying that the girlfriends have got to behave if the lights are off and then makes some comment about "i'm just a dirty old man." grandma protests "robert!" and someone presses play and everyone shushes them. it's the best kind of chaos.

but. it's time to go outlet shopping. and since i actually have a little money in my pocket i'm pretty excited about it.

you can feel it, if you want to

he shuffles down the neutral, dimly-lit hallway in small steps and watches the carpet pattern move slowly toward him. i see him swaying toward us as i touch base with the rn after the patients wrap-up group and give him a smile. he passes by, lifts his eyes to the hem of my skirt and bends his wrist ever so slightly to point at it.

"i like those skirts. they're pretty."

and his eyes move to mine, and the compliment becomes a connection.

"thank you."

he nods, re-focuses on the carpet and continues to shuffle methodically toward the tv room.

it was one of the simplest, most meaningful compliments i've ever gotten.

because it wasn't about my skirt, it wasn't about whether he liked my skirt or not, although that was the occasion. it was about him opening the door to conversation, you know? it was his way of saying "welcome."

i'm pretty sure i bounced down the hallway after that.

"so you want to work with crazies, huh?"

um, yes.

they were wonderful. very welcoming, which i was not expecting. open in a way that "sane" people rarely manage to achieve.

it's a totally different world, but it's a community.

i hate the circumstances, but i love that they've made connections despite their situations. or maybe because of them. either way.

since i'm nannying tomorrow, i'm going in after-hours, so i'll get to hang out with them and just talk to them outside of a class setting.

so, work from 9 to 5 today and then i had a few hours at home and then off again to katy's.

i haven't been in a bible study in such a long time.

my heart is so walled up when it comes to sharing the process of my faith with people. i mean, i can blog about it all i want, because i don't have to look you in the eyes when i'm typing away, you know? there's no accountability, no echo. but people make what you say echo back, they react, and it kind of peels back the outside of your sentence and looks at what you really meant. even if they don't mean to, if you respect them enough.

all that to say it's terrifying. because i like my flowery spiritual bullshit. but it's gets peeled back pretty quick. and then i have to deal with things i don't really want to. like my arrogance. and therefore my insecurities. which is always a trip and a half.

but i'm looking forward to the peeling, i think. i don't like the way i talk right now. i didn't like the way i felt tonight. it was awkward. like half my wall was down, but the other part was still up so i couldn't figure out whether to be honest or to be lofty.

i want to be raw, remember? raw like a carrot.

so that there's no get-to-know-me period, there's no intro session, there's no breaking through the shell. although the tragic, guarded beauty is an awfully tempting image. you know, it never quite works out the way i think it's going to, though. it's always a little more lonely than i think it will be; not very many people are in the dragon-slaying business, these days.

i think the goal of this summer, and my life, i suppose, is to wear my heart honestly, openly and truly on my sleeve.

good luck, right? that last one's the kicker, i feel.

but. here's to dreaming big.

'night, ya'll.

sweatpants and chamomile

i've decided this evening is going to be one of those.

i'm going to curl up, start beloved and drink my tea.

today's been a good one - i'm feeling a lot better about doing nothing now that i know i'm going to start work on monday.

i wonder if my room is ever going to be clean. it is getting better, slowly.

oh man. i need to do laundry tomorrow morning. i'm playing in a wedding, and i think i should probably wear clothes. nice ones. and i need to mail my lancaster forms. and i need to write down the days i'll be at the beach and in colorado. and i need to e-mail the new associate director. and call kelsey.

that's manageable. i just have to remember to do it. i might have to break out the planner one of these days.

i'm tired. i actually did physical activity today. 3 miles on the treadmill, in fact.

i think i fried my brain on one too many episodes of what not to wear, though.

mm. music. that's better.

it's funny. one song and i'm back on the plane. i can smell it, i can feel my earphones pulsing, i can feel the seat hitting my back in all the wrong places and my neck hurts from being crooked for an hour or so.

feels like not long ago at all, but it's been a couple months now since my crazy weekend jet-sets.

but. i've decided time is irrelevant. people put way too much weight in it and i really don't think it's all that important. so. i'm swearing off it for good.

do you know what i figured out about my emotions the other day? they have absolutely no direction. i just feel. and then, later, i can slap a name on it, but at first, it's just emotion. and it comes from the same place in my stomach every time. like i can watch a beautiful sunset or read a really sharp sentence and it hits the same place true sadness would. there's a little difference between every situation, obviously, but not enough to really separate the initial mmph.

i'm not sure that makes any sense. but i feel almost exactly the same thing in my stomach when i'm angry or when i'm inspired, when i'm broken or when i'm joyful.

and i'm not really sure what that means, but there it is.

do you know what makes me feel in the best way? finding the right music for my mood.

mmhm.

there's something about a mandolin, too, you know? it just adds . . . i don't know. something wonderful.

hey guess what. i'll be at the beach at this time next week after a road trip with the brothers.

i'm going to go read. and stick this song on repeat.

when she's sleeping on the sofa
when she's laying in her sunday best

i think i like it because it reminds me of iris a little bit. and it just pulses in the right way.

must be the mandolin.

[augustana]

smiling at the sky

mm. hi guster.

my shuffle has done well today, i think.

guess what? all my ranting about thunderstorms turned out to be just as good as a rain dance. slightly less entertaining, i suppose, but still.

anyway, it thunderstormed last night. was it last night? mmph. summer makes my days run together. it was yesterday night. wednesday night.

the point is that it thunderstormed. at night. when i was driving home from coffee.

which equals heaven. i realize that i'm probably insane for those things making up my heaven, but i like driving in the rain because of the sound it makes on the roof and the excuse it gives me to drive slowly and enjoy the curves in the road and my music. you know the slower you drive the more songs you can listen to. or the more times you can repeat the song you're stuck on, in my case.

not to mention the amazing sensation that is watching lightening make the entire valley light up as i drive through it. just makes your heart catch a little bit.

today was a be still day. you know the ones where someone sticks their cosmic foot out at just the right time to make you trip over it and look up at him. so i went out on the balcony and dusted the pollen off of one of the rocking chairs and sat for a little while and thought about how eager i get. and how i tend to be that stupid puppy running ahead and practically choking themselves on the leash when, if they would just walk, the walk would be so much more pleasant.

and you know, i say i'm eager to go, but i'm so hesitant to change anything. part of my heart is very content right here, in my bed in my house in my town in my comfort zone. and the other part is choking itself. with a constant struggle between the two, of course.

i realize that's kind of vague, but when i say eager to go, i mean eager to get up tomorrow and see what happens. and when i say that i'm content, i really mean that. i mean that i could die happy right now, if i was supposed to. i feel like i've learned a lot of big lessons in my life so far and i really like where i've come because of them and who i am now.

which means that i'm oozing arrogance, i'm pretty sure. and that makes me suspicious of my contentment, because anytime contentment breeds this kind of arrogance, it's the wrong kind of contentment.

but i'm not sure contentment is ever truly a good thing. it sounds too much like settling. that is where i am, though. settled. and the thing about being settled is that it's super comfy. and it lets me be arrogant. which is really fun, i'm not gonna lie.

reap the fruit of unfailing love,
and break up your unplowed ground . . .

[hosea]

mm, no thanks. it's nice and neat this way, please.

boring, but neat.

i really don't like boring, it's just a lot safer. and sometimes, after walking the tight rope for a few months, you start to really appreciate the safe things.

i think that's what this is. i think i've just learned how to appreciate my comfort zone. i'm a lot less attached to it than i used to be, but i'm still terrified to pray the "i trust you, do whatever you want" prayer because i know he will. i know he will anyway, but for some reason it just feels way too dangerous to stop running.

i mean, i finally have my independent heart back - do you really think i'm just gonna hand it over? i realize you're the creator of the universe and everything, but i just want to hold it in my own two hands for a little while, if you don't mind. plus, who knows what you'd do with it. i mean, let's be honest. you move all my furniture around and dump all the junk out of my boxes and onto the floor.

i hate cleaning.

but. i suppose it is worth it every once and awhile.

(she says begrudgingly)

portrait of a lady

so. this morning was my orientation. i have no idea where to go, remember, so i head up to the fifth floor hoping that someone will be able to point me in the right direction.

nope.

i sit behind the counter for a good 20 minutes because no one has any idea what's going on and then someone asks the right person and directs me to the main lobby, where i go and sign in thinking that i'm 10 minutes late, only to find out that it starts at 9:30, not 9:00, so i'm actually 20 minutes early. well. 35. it started a little late.

anyway, i met my middle-school counselor's daughter and my sunday school teacher who taught me when i was two during the orientation, so that was random. and lovely.

and i learned all the codes for things. grey, yellow, triage, all that. and i learned that i have to wash my hands approximately 30 times a day.

but guess what? the communication between school and the hospital isn't that great, so no one knows whether the contract went through which means i can't start work until they figure it out.

damn red tape.

oh well.

high point of today, though - tim and i went to barnes and noble and played in the poetry section and then i read him t.s. eliot on the way home.

it's kind of like going to the grocery store when you're hungry, setting me loose in a barnes and noble after my literary dry spell that is the academic school year. but i did well, i only bought one book - a collection of poems that i will keep and use forever until it smells like wisdom.

'So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul
Should be resurrected only among friends
Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom
That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room'

[t.s. eliot]

there is a communication in poetry that is found no where else in life, i think. except music. but that makes sense.

oh, and i finished the poisonwood bible today, thank goodness. my facebook profile is now accurate, seeing as how i've had it on my favorite books list for awhile.

and who wants to have an inaccurate facebook profile, i mean, really.

the thank goodness is not because i didn't enjoy it, by the way, the thank goodness is because i started it last summer.

yeah, i know. anyway, adah was my favorite.

and now i can move on to the stack of books on my desk. some of which i've read before, some of which i haven't. there's no way i'll finish them all, but i just like having a stack of books somewhere that i know will take up the rest of my summer.

i think beloved is next, i need some of toni morrison's writing in my life.

hokay. i'm going to go play.

those days of summer

it's been threatening to rain for three days and it would make me feel a lot less blah if it would just go ahead and let it out. this grumbling business is no good, let me tell you. i want a real thundestorm, please. the kind where it's a little tense to sit on the porch, but you do it anyway because it makes you feel wonderfully small.

see, the thing is that i'm just relaxed enough to be nervous, you know? i'm just comfortable enough to be uncomfortable. and when i get bored, i get paranoid. i feel like i should be thinking about something, so when i don't have anything to think about i watch movies and think about them or i pick some mundane thing in my life to over-analyze and stress out about.

or i don't think at all and then i just feel like a vegetable.

i think i'd be a carrot.

a raw one, though, not cooked. those are gross. although, cooked carrots are more what i feel like when i'm not thinking.

so i guess the goal is to be raw, then.

well.

rawly polished, perhaps.

wouldn't want to go out without my emotional lipstick on, now, would i?

anyway. tangent.

i want to move, i want to go, i want to learn, please. i don't like this sitting still stuff. and yes, i'm an introvert and can sit and think for hours on end, and i need to have time to do that every once and awhile, but that doesn't mean i like to do it for two weeks straight. seriously.

plus i'm just lazy. so. if i let myself be lazy, i just get really lazy. cooked carrots lazy, if you will. and i don't like that feeling, i don't like knowing that i have not done anything productive in the last two weeks. i want to feel like i've accomplished things. and it doesn't matter what kind of things, it just matters that they exist, whether emotional or physical or intellectual or actual things that i've done that have helped someone other than myself, imagine that.

well. i suppose the good thing about how stressed i am about not being stressed is that i'm going to be super stressed tomorrow, seeing as how my orientation is tomorrow at the hospital and the only thing i know about it is that it's at the hospital at 9:00. no room number, no dress code, no information on what i need to bring, nothing.

but that's ok. i've got more important things to be stressed about right now.

like being bored.

today was good though, i kept sam and jake for a few hours this morning, which was wonderful, despite sam's apple juice problem.

"do you have apple juice in your ears, sam?"
"yeah"
"is that why i have to call you five times before you answer?"
(gives me the aw, shucks grin)
"yeah"
"oh, ok"

it's great to keep them again, but it is weird to fall back into the routine with both boys a year older. lunch and naptime are the same, but sam's almost three and jake's coming on 18 months at least (and thus tumbling around like a maniac). which means i have to sit in a strategic spot when they play, ready to dive for whichever boy decides to topple over first.

well. i think i might need a little time outside, even if it does refuse to rain properly.

i might even take a book with me . . .

because of what we're chasing

well. today has been an interesting day, i think. i got up this morning to see bridgette off, and then promptly went back to bed and slept through my alarm, woke up five minutes before i had to leave for church, threw on a comfy dress and combed my hair and was 15 minutes late. which is normal, but still.

god's been trying to get my attention for the past couple of days, too, so that always makes for an interesting sunday. or any day, for that matter.

but, the point is that josiah talked about daily bread, of course. the everyday needs, the constant faith. when he wasn't demonstrating kung-fu moves in the context of anger-ninjas, mind you.

anyway. it was exactly what i knew i needed to hear, but my mind just kept pulling, you know?

i don't want to
i don't want to

faith is so much harder to want at home; i don't feel like i need it. i'm feel like i'm comfortable, i'm not stressed, i feel secure.

and there's always crappy tv to distract me. or movies. i've been using those too.

but i think this summer's purpose is to teach me how to grow in the midst of comfort, you know? to need when i don't feel like i do. i've had to grow in discomfort for awhile now, and i think my life is shifting gears for a few months and then i'll be back to being uncomfortable, because i have a feeling i won't feel too secure stepping of the plane in manchester this fall hoping to figure out the transportation system enough to get myself and my bags to lancaster. although i have heard that travel in the uk is relatively painless. actually i think that was the subway system in london that i've heard good things about.

i hope they won't think i'm a stupid american.

anyway. i better snap out of this by wednesday or i'm sunk. and i know that i will (snap out of it), i just have this feeling that apathy and the field of mental health care won't really go together too well if for some reason i don't.

i just have this mental image of me leaning against the wall in the middle of some crisis yawning, you know?

*she grins*

anyway. i watched this special on faith and politics on cnn this evening - really fascinating stuff. it was really kind of weird to hear politicians break out the christianese. i mean, it was really encouraging to hear potential leaders using words like wisdom and discernment. i definitely came away from it with a greater respect for obama and hilary. yes, hilary impressed me a lot, actually. not so much john edwards, though. i just don't believe him when he talks. i realize that's kind of like picking a team for their pretty colors, but i'm just sharing my opinion.

mom and i were talking about what a candidate for president really needs, and you know something? either style of government works. good things have been accomplished with both republican and democratic governments and in a perfect world, both systems would be equally effective. i really believe that. so really, it's the character of the person in office that is the most important thing, because it's their character that will determine how they attempt to fit their style to our imperfect world. and how willing they are to accept criticism, which is absolutely essential for good leadership, i think.

but then the question is raised whether you can truly judge someone's character through their campaign ad's and speeches and voting record. again, pretty colors territory, i think.

says the psychology major. i really have no informed opinion about politics, i'm just rambling.

but the fact that i'm rambling about politics means that the world stopped spinning, i'm pretty sure.

yeah. ok. i'm tired.

nice is good

actually, i'm with clementine on this one. i really don't like nice. it's kind of an awful concept. very vague, very blah. lots of room to hide, i think.

i tend to be nice - it's very frustrating. i am working on it, though.

my mind is such a mess from this movie! yes. another movie. two, actually. the motorcycle diaries, which i loved just as much the second time around, and eternal sunshine of the spotless mind for the first time.

my mind is a mess from the latter, in case that was confusing. it felt really familiar, eternal sunshine did. too familiar. i think i assume anything that's too familiar must be untrue, because that means it fits in with my idealism. and that's obviously inaccurate.

although i do think it's a lot less inaccurate than it feels sometimes.

i'm going to have to process it later, i think. my emotions are very distracting when they want to be.

now, for example. but that's what happens when you cry at movies, i suppose.

mmhm.

yes, they named her after the dawn . . .

i watched sleeping beauty while i walked on the treadmill yesterday. yes, really. but i only watched through the scene in the woods, you know? the i know you, i walked with you once upon a dream scene? that was always my favorite when i was little. and i think i've officially changed my favorite princess movie. i always thought it was cinderella, but i think the whole living/dancing in the woods thing is much more my style.

it's very important that i know these things.

i need to write a good song. i've been popping them out for the past few months like nobody's business, but they've all been emotional-vomit songs, if you know what i mean, and i'm tired of that. i want to produce a calculated, thoughtful song with lines that are clever and play with their words. a truthful song would be nice, too, but those are really hard to acheive. well. hard is the wrong word. truthful songs are just time-consuming to write because you have to re-write them so many times. at least i do.

anyway. it'll be awhile, but i've got awhile for the first time in awhile.

i'm so tired.

i've been watching a lot of movies lately, which is wonderful. i watched the last king of scotland with mom the other night. you know, i get really tense when i watch movies that have any kind of drama in them. i get really caught up in the characters, too, and characters like idi amin make me chew my fingernails. because they're fascinating and violent and so terrifying because they pull things out of the people around them that those people never knew they were capable of.

i will be really interested to see how many things are pulled out of me this summer at the hospital.

when i watched the science of sleep i didn't really get all that caught up in the characters, though. i just kind of laughed at them from the outside. i mean, i genuinely appreciated their quirkiness, but i'm not sure i understood the point of it. usually quirkiness in movies is making a statement, but then again the statement may have been to not make a statement. stephanie did say, after all, that randomness is very hard to construct and that organization will find it's way in if you're not very careful.

hm. i need to think about it more. or watch it again. because i think it was really full of character development that i just missed, you know? i was too focused on the quirkiness, which was really wonderfully funny sometimes.

i also was just in a kind of foul mood earlier. definitely not in the mood to pick out the subtleties in a european film. it probably would have been good practice for the fall. but french-quirky is a lot different than british-quirky, i think, so maybe not.

oh, wonderfulness! i showed bridgette the drum circle . . . it was the first time i'd been downtown since being back for the summer.

man, i really do love it there. and then we went to old europe and ran into some of the crew and ate our lovely desserts and tomorrow, we will bathe the grumpy old horse. he's going to be so frustrated. but. he will be pretty.

deus ex machina

well, i just finished watching donnie darko with tim.

mmph.

the troubling thing about it is that i can't grasp it, you know? i can't wrap my mind around a feeling about it, like there's a blank spot in the place where my understanding should be. and i get little bits and pieces, and i'm making up some of my own pieces, but i have no idea where to start.

i would love to ask the writer if he or she thinks beauty and darkness can co-exist.

if they can't, then beauty is not what i think it is. nor is darkness, i suppose.

see, i think the way i think of darkness is that it's broken beauty. and if beauty is truly beautiful, then it can reclaim what was once it's own, right? so any dark thing can, if we're going with my thought process here, be reclaimed and become beautiful again.

*i wonder if she's an idealist . . .*

but this movie. in this movie beauty was reclaimed by destroying the darkness, not reforming it. donnie was removed so that gretchen could exist.

that's why it's troubling, i think. because then, if that's true, beauty is not any more powerful than darkness because it can't co-exist with it and overcome it. because in order to overcome something you have to co-exist with it first. and when i say overcome i think i mean change/reclaim.

i know that there is beauty in everything. i really believe that. but what i'm struggling with at this point in my life is whether that means that everything is beautiful or not. i think i live like everything is beautiful, but i'm not so sure that's true.

but it's got to be.

please.

at the same time, it's impossible. it's not possible for everything to be definitively beautiful. if everything was beautiful then nothing would be. so there must be some things that aren't. there must be some things that are dark. but people? are there people who are dark?

of course there are. but does that mean that they are simply broken beauties or does that mean that they have nothing in them to reclaim?

(this is my drive to be a psychologist, by the way - being part of the process of reclaiming people's beauty. i think some people call it a savior complex . . .)

all this rambling about two words that i couldn't define for you if i tried. beauty? darkness? i have feelings for them, i have colors and melodies and impulses and emotions and fuzzy memories that are attached to each one, but if i had to come out with a discrete definition . . .

and even if i could, anything i would come up with would absolutely cheapen them. you almost have to paint them, you know? or sculpt or sing or play them. i think ideas like beauty and darkness can only ever be represented, never defined.


you know, schizophrenics are delusional. i wonder if donnie's delusion was that beauty and darkness couldn't co-exist. i wonder if that was the point, you know, the statement the writer was trying to make.

that's why i'd like to ask him or her. i think it'd clear a lot of things up. about the movie, at least. life in general would still be a bit patchy. but what would i do if i had all of the answers, honestly, you know? i would be bored. and frustrated. because i have a feeling that knowing the answer wouldn't make getting there any easier.

*sigh*

i feel better now. my picture is forming, the blank spot isn't as big. i will have to watch it again, though.


time travel, by the way. time travel was his deus ex machina, i think.


i want to live where soul meets body . . .

[death cab]

at world's end . . .

so the path from my bed to my bathroom is now completely hazardous to my health. not to mention the path from my bed to the door. i have to do a little dance that involves hopping around and hoping my foot lands on one of the few patches of carpet left to get to either destination. all thanks to the pursuit of my leggings. which i found, finally.

but, life is good because i have my guster t-shirt on, and it's big enough to be a fairly functional dress, if i were a little less modest. hence the leggings. anyway, the dogs are quietly chewing away on their respective rawhides, until maya gets restless and steals bailey's and then he just looks at me with those big brown eyes like i should do something about it. you would think that a 100-something pound black lab could do something about it on his own, but he's a big baby, you know. and little maya's pretty intimidating. even though she is deaf. seriously, she can't hear a thing. which makes training her a bit of a joke.

so i've moved on to the decemberists - i listened to death cab to the point where i knew my favorite songs pretty much line by line, so i figured it was ok to leave off of them for a little while.

there are angels
in your angles

also, i think they have a pirate-y kind of feel, the decemberists do, so i thought they were appropriate for tonight, since mom and i went to see the third pirates movie.

you know, i've gotta hand it to disney - i thought it was a truly good ending. i mean, i really like it when the plot fits in with the characters, rather than the characters fitting into the plot.

but i don't think i'll ever be able to crush on will turner, on a more shallow note, i suppose. he's too . . . something, i don't know. maybe it's just that he's too fictional. see, normally the rough-around- the-edges-with-a-noble-heart thing is a formula for success, but maybe i'm just not meant to fall in love with a pirate.

i think i'm ok with that.

well. i think that's all i've got for tonight, i've got to go fill out some candidate-rating sheets and some forms for lancaster before i go to bed.

i definitely didn't call anyone today that i was supposed to. like my employer. oh well, it's not that she wanted me to call, i just need to figure out my schedule.

ok. 'night.